No Weights?
No Problem
There exists an extremely under utilized variable when it comes to the field of fitness and exercising, and it’s called the “Tempo”
Tempo is a very strong weapon in your arsenal that you can use when you don’t have enough weights to increase intensity, or simply don’t have weights.
Before I get into how to use it, I have to explain its components.
So what is a tempo?
A tempo is the speed at which an individual does an exercise, and it consists of 4 components, Eccentric movements, Pause, Concentric movement, Pause;
It comes in this format, 0-0-0-0, that would indicate a movement that is instantaneous, which is impossible, so a more realistic Tempo is this, 1-0-1-0 which would mean the eccentric and concentric movements would only take 1 second to do.
Why am I mentioning tempo?
Studies have shown that tempo can increase the intensity of an exercise or improve specific aspects of such goals are desired by tweaking the numbers that I have mentioned.
So if an athlete is training for power, a tempo would look something like this, x-x-x-x, which means do it as soon as possible basically, which develops power;
But if your goal is muscle hypertrophy, and muscle strength & stability, a tempo would look something like this, 4-1-4-2, so that means the movement would be so much slower than how a normal person would do the resistance training.
Now I’d like to discuss tempo in a specific scenario, let's say you’ve been using a 10 kg dumbbells for a very long time, and have reached a repetition of 20x with ease, you can do it without breaking a sweat, that’s when tempo comes in, slow down the movement to 4-1-4-2, which is the slowest tempo mentioned in the literature that increases intensity, and causes hypertrophy, and improves muscle strength.
You might ask why specifically 20 reps, why not more? Now that is a discussion for another day.
